The End of Hypocrisy with Martha Finnemore

The U.S. government seems outraged that people are leaking classified materials about its less attractive behavior. It certainly acts that way: three years ago, after Chelsea Manning, an army private then known as Bradley Manning, turned over hundreds of thousands of classified cables to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, U.S. authorities imprisoned the soldier under conditions that the UN special rapporteur on torture deemed cruel and inhumane. The Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell, appearing on Meet the Press shortly thereafter, called WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, “a high-tech terrorist.”

More recently, following the disclosures about U.S. spying programs

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Other Writing:

Essay

The New Libertarian Elitists – with Hugo Mercier and Melissa Schwartzberg

What’s behind the dangerous new notion that democracy should be left to the well-educated. It’s been a rough ten years for democracy. It isn’t just that Donald Trump was elected against the wishes of the majority of American voters, and that he then tried to overturn an election that he lost. Nor is it even ...
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Essay

The Invisible Transformation of the Co-decision Procedure: Problems of Democratic Legitimacy. – with Adrienne Hèritier

The relationship between Council and Parliament within the codecision procedure involves a plethora of informal and semi-formal meetings in which many of the real decisions about legislation are taken, with little scope for public oversight. In the light of the current debate on the future of European Union, the report will address the question what ...
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